You can have the best marketing in the world, but if your sales team can’t convert opportunities into customers, growth stalls!
Enjoy this eye-opening webinar with Emily Yepes, one of today’s most respected sales trainers, as she shares the strategies that the highest-performing sales professionals use to consistently build a more effective sales process.
Her philosophy is clear: “Great salespeople aren’t born—they’re trained. With the right mindset, anyone can learn to overcome buyer resistance and establish genuine trust that lasts.”
Emily combines years of real-world selling experience with proven coaching methods that have helped sales teams dramatically improve their results. This isn’t theory or motivation—it’s a practical playbook you can start using right away!
Transcript:
Yeah. Excellent. Thank you for that. Morgan, give us a little background on yourself and then I’ll kick you guys off and zip my lip.
Well, I’m Morgan DiGiorgio. I’m the Chief Revenue Officer for Direct Mail 2.0, who’s mailing what and DM2O.ai. And I’m really excited about today’s session because Brad and I spend a lot of time talking about how to generate marketing results, but generating the opportunity is only half the battle, right? You can have the best marketing in the world, but if your sales team can’t convert those opportunities into customers, then you’re not getting ROI in your marketing and revenue will stall.
That’s really what we’re going to focus on today. As Rod alluded to, I’m sure that the majority of the people on our webinar today do know me or know about our organization, but I’ll just tell you a little bit about what we do for those that don’t. Together with our three organizations, we bring competitive intelligence AI-powered campaign planning, omnichannel execution and attribution together into one ecosystem. So we have a competitive intelligence platform that will give visibility into who’s literally mailing what, what they’re mailing creative design inspiration, and Give you leads for direct mail customers. Then DM20.ai is our AI powered planning and optimization platform, and that helps marketers analyze opportunities and make smarter decisions around strategy, creative targeting and spend before the campaigns even go to market And then direct mail 2.0 turns direct mail into an omnichannel performance marketing channel. The direct mail is that foundation, and then we surround it with coordinated digital touchpoints tracking and attribution increase engagement and measure performance. So we are really good at marketing, but then sales has to convert them, and so that is where Our guest comes in today, so I’m excited to turn it over to Emily Yepes.
Okay Great. So just before I step out, I wanted to just say one thing. Always be learning. That’s why we have these webinars. Always be learning. And I’ll tell you something You can sell your way out of a lot of problems operationally, financially, anything. So, this is key. It gets… people get complacent, and they think it’s just not working. Start learning something new. So that’s my soapbox for now.
Emily, take it away. I’m muting.
All right, wonderful. Welcome, everybody. So the theme of this webinar is Why Prospects say yes And I do want to make a distinction because many of you are in marketing, work with marketers, know marketing quite well. I don’t claim to play in the marketing sandbox, right? There’s a difference between the one-to-many communication and the one-to-one. So really where I’m talking about is marketing does their job to bring in Leads And as soon as that one-to-one conversation starts, that is where sales picks up. So, we… there’s always, if we’re not careful, that conflict between, you know, we’re bringing you leads and sales is saying, well, you know, they weren’t good enough, and it’s like, well, were they or were they not? Like, we… and it can make your jobs harder When sales is not pulling their end of the job, right? So this is a one, this is on the sales side, not the marketing side. And specifically, what I want to share with you is what we have learned about what it really takes to be an elite seller. So, I’ve put together for you a list of five non-negotiables for elite sellers. So let me share my screen here And I’ll walk you through What do I mean by non-negotiables for elite sellers?
Okay.
There are 5 things that we see repeatedly that the very best sellers always do or avoid doing. The first one is that they don’t quote prematurely. So what do I mean by that? Well, it’s not about just what you sell, it’s how you sell it. So it doesn’t take somebody who’s very skilled On the sales side, to show up at a prospect’s office and say, Hey, you know, let me… what do you have going on? And for them to say, I want to get a quote on 20,000 pieces. And for me, and for somebody, a salesperson to say, sure, here’s a quote on that. That doesn’t take a lot of skill to say Sure, here’s a quote on 20,000 pieces. What separates elite sellers, even in industries that are highly commoditized, I’m not saying it is a commodity, but buyers can act that way. When buyers are acting like it’s a commodity, is the way that they sell. And we as sellers are very aware of our typical sales process. And it doesn’t really matter what industry you’re in. This is the typical sales process that salespeople typically go to through. First, they conduct a needs analysis. That is the discovery part, right? What is it that you’re trying to accomplish? The next thing that we do is we present or propose Based on what you want to do Here is our solution. Here is how much it would cost and how we would go about fixing your problem and meeting your need. And then the next thing that we as sellers do is we attempt to close So we say, so would you like to move forward? What did you decide to do? Can we get those ready for you?
And sometimes it works. Don’t get me wrong, I sold this way for a very long time. Sometimes it works. But if it doesn’t work, the next thing that we do is we put up our fists and we’re now handling objections. And they say, well, I really like it, but it’s a little more than we paid before, so I think we’re just going to have to go with that. We’re like, oh, but you didn’t get the same quality or service Or I really like it, but my boss really has a relationship with the vendor we’ve used before, and we’re like, oh, yes, but did you get the same quality and service? And so, we shared that proposal, and now we’re kind of in defensive mode while we’re handling those objections, right?
The next thing that happens is if we don’t get the business, we are now following up Just following up. Did you decide to move forward? What did you all decide? Just checking in. And at that point, we’ve been granted unlimited access to their voicemail. Now, again, sometimes it works, but if it doesn’t work There’s a specific place where it falls apart.
I’m going to dig into that a little bit more. But before I do, I want to share what we don’t always think about. We’re not as conscious of it.
Buyers have the same system That has evolved to precisely match ours Just like we have a standard process that we go through, we, as in salespeople selling anybody anything, they… buyers have a process they go through that is precisely evolved to counteract what they expect from any salesperson that they’re working with The first thing they do is they express interest. They say, sure, I’m willing to talk. Let’s chat about it. It takes a meeting.
That’s when the salesperson jumps in, right? The next thing that they do is they act motivated This sounds really great. Really like what you put in front of me. Could you send me a proposal?
At that point, they’re still really positive about us, right? Then the next thing that happens is we present or propose, here’s how much it would cost, and here’s how we would solve your problem. They now have our proposal, they have our solution And if it doesn’t work, the next thing they do is avoid commitment Until at some point they poof.
So when we line these things up, we can see, when we line these things up, whoopsie, we can see that there are precise match. They express interest, we conduct a needs analysis. They act motivated. We present or propose. They’ve now got our information and then we say, so would you like to do business And if it’s going to fall apart, it always falls apart at that point in time.
So If we really dig into it, and if you reflect back on where exactly did the deals that you can think of, like all the deals that, you know, I really thought we had something going, they seemed really positive. I thought we had good bonding. I thought we were building a relationship, and then it just went south I’m willing to bet it went south Here After they obtain information And when we’re trying to close Because when we quote prematurely, going back to these non-negotiables, high performers do not quote prematurely. When we quote prematurely We are now left in this trap, in this sort of dynamic that is predictable and repeatable and plays out over and over and over again.
Our quote is our leverage.
and our work that we do to put together a quote We deserve something. We have rights to as salespeople in exchange for that effort and the price of that is to be able to really understand what they’re trying to accomplish so that whatever we put together to share with them actually makes sense for them.
And I realize this is easier said than done. We don’t have time today to go into all of the techniques that we use to prevent from quoting prematurely, but I am going to share some of them today with you, some things that will go ahead and get you started But don’t take my word for it. What do I know? I’m just a sales coach and trainer, right? Albert Einstein was of the same belief. If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and only 5 minutes finding the solution.
This is the same kind of thinking to say that if I want to have a better success rate by the time I actually deliver my quote I am going to have to slow down discovery. I am going to have to really understand, do they really have a reason to do this? What is the cost of them not taking action here Are they both willing and able to invest what it takes in order to do business with us? And how are decisions made in their organization? And if I don’t understand those things, it’s probably not yet time for me to offer up a quote that they can then share with my competitors share with the incumbent, keep me honest, use me as a check quote, etc.
Another way to think about this is if every single one of you and all of your competitors are behaving in the exact same way in front of these prospects These buyers are seeing the same pattern play out no matter what they’re buying If I’m really honest with myself, this is the hard truth that I’m here to deliver. I’m sorry, buckle up.
If all else is the same, if we look the same, act the same, feel the same, taste the same, give them the same experience as everyone else who’s selling them everything. Everybody’s telling them we’re the best at what we do. You want 20,000 postcards. Okay, great. Here you go Everybody’s just willing to give me a quote and not ask further questions.
Can we blame them for buying on anything other than price?
Because in their position, everything looks the same, but one is a little bit cheaper.
So I’m going to work through with you today a few of the ways that we can create a different experience so that we don’t get treated the same as everybody else, because when we get treated the same as everybody else, unfortunately, what that means is that our buyers are thinking about us as a commodity. And I know you’re not a commodity, you know you’re not a commodity, but buyers are thinking about you in that way, unless you create a different experience.
So let’s take the example of a buyer saying, what would 10,000 postcards cost Now, any amateur seller, it could be your very first day on the job, can go ahead and say, sure, you know, let me go quote that for you and not ask further questions. At which point, if everybody’s doing that, of course, they’re going to go with the lowest cost Right? However, what if instead I started asking questions like I can absolutely price the mailing But before I do that, I want to understand what you need the campaign to accomplish. Are you trying to fill spun up appointments, generate replacement system estimates, reactivate past customers, or target new homeowners? How will you know whether the campaign worked This opens a better conversation. Are they mailing to a broad saturation list, a tighter, higher value audience? What is the desired action? Is it a call, a text, a book online, visit a landing page? Do they need to know which households respond? Does it matter to them for this?
What if a recipient visits the site but then leaves without converting?
If I’m asking questions like this, then I am showing up and creating a different experience than all of my competitors who said, sure, here’s the cost of 20,000 postcards.
And that also allows me to make sure that when I present and propose, it is in line with something that is way more accurate for what they’re looking for, and it’s not premature.
Okay, behavior number two, they do not let how they feel determine how they act.
Okay.
let’s be really honest, I think that sales is the best profession in the world. Obviously, I’m biased, but it is not a place where we get our needs met. We are faced with rejection, we are faced with really putting ourselves out there, we have to learn to be resilient And that means that we have to do as much work on ourselves as we put into our talk tracks and our sales process and stuff. We have to work a lot on our own wrangling of our brains in order to keep our head in the game.
High performers recognize Even if they don’t Even if the head trash, which is our affectionate term for the stories and things that we tell ourselves that just ain’t true, even if our head trash isn’t accurate It can still get in our way of doing a really good job. So let me give you an example of what I mean by that.
Let’s say that you talk to a prospect, and the first thing they say is, we already do direct mail.
Okay, if I’m not careful, head trash that can seep into my mind at that point that will then become reality is, oh, we’re just another printer. They’re not going to spend more on tracking. I don’t want to sound pushy. And this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I allow myself to let my behavior be based on This head trash that honestly is false Then I’m not going to do a good job for myself or my company or my customer.
Other variations of head trash that, listen, I hang out with salespeople all day. No one is immune to head trash. If you tell me you don’t have any, that is your head trash. So let’s be honest, these are common head trashes that we see, okay?
They only care about price. They don’t understand the technology. I’m not an expert in this. They already have an agency. I don’t want to challenge them. If I ask about ROI, then what if we can’t prove it? Right? These are false stories that we tell ourselves that can get in the way of us doing a really good job.
There’s the hard truth again. I’m full of hard truths for you today.
It’s okay if you have head trash. It’s okay if you have doubt You cannot act in a way that’s consistent with that. You have to act in a way that is consistent with what you want to believe, right? So let me give you an example.
If I were going to say, I’m not going to allow that head trash to affect me Then when I hear someone say, we already do direct mail, I might come back with this You know, that makes sense. Most of our clients were already mailing before they added measurement Can I ask when your campaign lands, can you see which offers drove calls, website visits, store traffic, or are you mainly measuring the total sales outcome afterwards?
So, my mindset, instead of I now feel defeated, is okay, and what? And what else An elite seller separates however they might be feeling in that moment to what is the most next appropriate action. And the goal was never to force a sale, but it’s to earn the right to uncover a gap, right?
That is what we call head trash. It’s just being aware, being acutely aware of It’s not that there aren’t elements or seeds of truth in these pieces of head trash, but they’re not a complete story. And we can’t let them get in our way.
Number three, they act as if they were independently wealthy and don’t need the business, even if that’s not true.
Because just like in dating, nobody wants to work with somebody who is desperate, right? So we have a lot of Sandler rules, I already threw one up on the screen here, but here’s another one. I’m financially independent, and I don’t need the business. I do, however, want the business, if it makes sense for both you and for me And this rule allows us to show up in front of our prospects with confidence. And what we at Sandler call equal business stature, meaning even if I am just a salesperson calling on somebody who is maybe a senior leader at their organization, in the context of their direct mail conversation, we are absolutely equals We’re equals in that conversation. And this relationship we are always equals.
This rule is related to another rule that is hard selling is good for one thing, and that is hard pushback.
So instead of a push selling, let me tell you how great we are. Let me tell you where we have the best quality, best service, best reputation.
Unfortunately, even if that’s true in your market, all of your competitors are saying the exact same thing.
So again, why not buy the cheaper option?
If, however, my posturing is more, hey, I’m financially independent, and I only want this business if it makes sense genuinely for you and for me, then I’m going to have a little bit of a skepticism about me. I’m going to be qualifying them as hard as I qualify… as hard as they’re qualifying me So help me understand. You’ve done direct mail, that’s great, right? How have you evaluated it? What’s worked? What’s not worked? I want to make sure that the things that we value and the ways that we can add to what they’re doing already are things that they even care about and will make sense for them So let’s take the example that they say, look, just give me your lowest price for 25,000 postcards. I don’t want any tracking, no QR code, no landing page, no reporting. We’ll know if it worked because our phones will ring.
Okay, if I’m independently wealthy and don’t need the business, I am not going to wimp out there and just send them a quote.
Instead, I’m qualifying them about whether or not we’re even aligned high level, and it’s gonna sound something like this. Hey, we can provide a traditional print and mail quote if that’s truly what you need.
I do want to be transparent, though. Our best work is for organizations that want to connect mail to measurable outcomes. If you only want the lowest print price, we might not be the right fit. And I would rather say that now than disappoint you later.
That’s the kind of talk track you would use if you were independently wealthy and didn’t need the business.
Here it is on the screen.
Another piece we can add to that is If we could show which male recipients engaged, called, texted, clicked, or returned to your site, would that be worth evaluating before we finalize the scope?
Because I can’t, as a seller make anybody care about the things that I think they should care about, the things that I care about, but it absolutely is my job to craft a conversation where They lead that conversation thinking I now understand my problem or have a new perspective about my problem or even maybe have more questions about what I’m doing than I did before I talked to this person.
Because they challenged me because they pushed back, because they wanted to make sure that it was right.
in a respectful, courteous way, of course.
Number four. They are intensely curious.
Even when They already know the answer.
Let me show you what I mean by that. There’s this phenomenon that we see, really, it happens in literally every industry called the curiosity curve.
And what happens is when somebody’s brand new to an industry, brand new to a role, we often see that their sales are higher than when they get a little bit trained up And they take a debt before they come back up And the reason for that is when you are brand spanking new and people ask you questions about what’s possible on tracking of this piece, for example, you go, you know, I don’t know. It’s a great question. What are you hoping it will do? And so you ask a whole lot of questions because you genuinely don’t have a lot of answers And when you ask a lot of questions, you tend to understand the problem a lot better, and you are able to bring back to them a solution that actually matches their expectations and needs, rather than somebody says, what can you do with track for tracking? And I go.
Let me tell you all about us. Now, enough about you, let’s talk about me now. And now, I’m so excited about my new knowledge that I’m sharing all the different things that we could do, and I’ve missed the opportunity to actually understand why are they asking about that Because the right answer to What can you do around tracking is not, let me tell you what we can do. It’s great question. What are you hoping we can do?
Do you have an idea Because if they already have something in mind, I sure as heck want to know what that is. Doesn’t mean that I might not even need to redirect them, or they may have no idea, and that’s why they’re asking. That’s a different response than they already have an idea, and I need to figure out if I need to take them somewhere else with that.
So high performers are intensely curious. In fact They check themselves on all sorts of things that buyers say that could kind of turn into head trash for us. So, for example, buyer says we’re already working with someone High performers understand they did not just say, why should we buy from you?
They did not ask me for a pitch, or we’re already happy with our current supplier. High performers understand they did not just say, tell me why you’re better.
Your prices are higher than we’re accustomed to is not an immediate ask for a reduction in price. All of us have bought things that were more than we thought we were gonna have to pay for it, and we just had to wrap our heads around that for a moment. So we’re gonna sit with that and see what is the right route here.
Or we always get 3 quotes What they did not say is lowest price wins. Now, that might be what they mean, but we don’t know until we test that assumption.
So let’s take the example of a buyer says, you know, we just need a year-end appeal If I’m not careful, let’s assume this is a nonprofit, right? If I’m not careful, I might just jump in with, okay, great, we can do a donor letter, reply envelope. I’m sure you have a mailing list and just jump into, again, enough about you Well, let me tell you all about me.
But really, there are much better questions behind that. So for example, we can help with that. I’ll need to understand some things in order to recommend the best approach.
What changed in donor behavior last year? Which donor segments renewed, upgraded last. What would a successful campaign need to produce?
When someone visits the page but doesn’t give, what follow-up happens today?
In other words, I don’t want you blaming us if your people didn’t do the salespeople didn’t do what they’re supposed to do, right? Or the development people for nonprofits. Do you have a different story or offer for a first time donor versus a lapsed donor? These are much better questions than Responding to this was, sure, let me tell, let’s talk about letters and reply envelopes.
The Sandler rule undermining this is that If I’m gonna create a different experience that allows me to decommoditize myself I have to recognize that my value as a salesperson is determined by the quality of the questions that I ask and not by the information that I give.
That is especially true in today’s world where buyers are coming already, often having experience with direct mail. They have possibly used AI to look things up about you and what’s possible and what best practices are. They’re coming to you with more information than maybe they have. They had 10, 15, 20 years ago, or even five years ago And so my value comes less from, let me share with you all the things that we can do, especially during discovery, and a lot more from asking questions that helps them self-realize that maybe they need our help to think through this.
Finally, number five High performers run toward hard conversations. That’s not being aggressive, but it is being professionally responsible.
They are willing to discuss investment, ROI, measurement, follow-up capacity, decision makers, risks before the client spends money on a mailing that they might not be able to evaluate.
So, for example, we need to get 20,000 postcards out. We’ve done this before. We know the drill. Buyers might show up with that kind of posturing Okay, I appreciate that. You clearly know how to execute a mailing.
The one thing I’d like to make sure of before we price 20,000 pieces is that we’re not simply repeating the same thing if there’s an opportunity to make it more measurable and productive.
Would it be fair to take five minutes to look at what happened after the last campaign, what it cost, what it produced, and what you could or could not see before I recommend scope Even though we’ve got a buyer in this case who seems really excited and positive, hey, all we need is the postcards. We’ve done this before. We know the drill. If I’m not careful, an amateur salesperson will go, I got a live one, right? But a high, an elite seller A high performer is going to slow their roll a little bit and create value through the questions that they ask And let’s be honest, a little client budget humor Sometimes what they want and what they are willing and able to pay for are not the same thing.
So high performers run toward that problem. I realize that you said you wanted 20,000 postcards with foil and all these extra snazzy details. So I quoted it for you, and then you told me we were too expensive. Does that happen to anybody besides me? Because I used to sell these things. I sold advertising, including print inserts Right? So yes, what they thought they wanted was not what they could actually afford or were willing to spend When you say you need 20,000 postcards out, what investment have you allocated for the campaign? Not just print and posted, but the full effort to generate and measure a result What has to happen after these pieces land for you to call it successful? So they’re going to run toward that ROI conversation. They’re going to run toward the conversation of why might this not work? And let’s make sure it really makes sense because they recognize going all the way back To this slide where we started Objections are nothing more then things that I failed to qualify around Oops. My mouse is swirling around. Objections are nothing more than things I failed to qualify around. We didn’t talk about how much it was going to cost to make sure that the ROI made sense. We didn’t talk about how decisions were going to be made and therefore I’m finding out so-and-so isn’t on board We didn’t talk about whether or not they really needed this. And so they came back to me with, you know what, I think we’re going to skip this mailing.
Those are objections that if we had run toward the hard conversations, do you really need to do this? Does it make sense? What’s the payoff likely to be? I wouldn’t be dealing with those as objections. I might have disqualified them out sooner, but I’d much rather do that Then be endlessly chasing them in their voicemail.
So in closing, these are the five behaviors of an elite seller. And I know that we’re Morgan has some Q&A that we’ve got scheduled for the rest of our time here together.
You’re welcome Thank you, Emily. That was fantastic. I love how directly correlated to the print industry. I got a lot out of that. I love the consultative selling process and Awesome. It was incredible. Really, really there’s a lot that people could tap into and utilize you as a very high quality resource. But yeah, I just kind of wanted to pick your brain a little bit and maybe banter back and forth a bit. I mean, I myself spend a lot of time in sales also And the management of sales teams. But, you know, one thing I wanted to talk to you about was, you know, we always want to improve conversion, but how often do you think that a sales team is trying to fix the wrong problem, or how much of a sales problem do you think actually starts before the sales call or before the salesperson even engages the customer? And what do you think some of those things are?
Yeah. Oh, well, I think it’s a huge, a huge problem. And there’s a couple of things going on there. One, and I alluded to this at the beginning, is that there can sometimes be some tension between the marketing part of an organization and the sales part, because marketing’s like, we have brought you a whole bunch of leads, and sales could throw them out, whereas I have seen with my own eyeballs, very high-quality leads come through that salespeople have in all kinds of industries, that salespeople had disqualified very prematurely Sure. And that piece between a lead comes in, now I need to do some digging as a salesperson to figure out What is the possible reason that they might be reaching out? How am I going to get this conversation started? What can I find out that I know about them already? Do I have any sense of what they might be doing currently? That prep work will make or break that first impression And Very often, and I can pick on salespeople because I am one, and I hang out with salespeople all day long, but we have a tendency as a group to wing it, to be like, I know my stuff really well, and so I’m just gonna show up on the sale sales call, and kind of do my thing and ask a bunch of questions But we can’t get away with that anymore because buyers today are extremely educated already on what we are selling and what it might mean to them. So what we used to be a very exploratory first call Those calls now sometimes have a feel of them like this might be our 10th call. Like, that’s the level of knowledge that a prospect might already have about what they’re buying. And they’re coming in for us to make sense of their options and to add layers of understanding through the questions that we ask But I can’t assume that I’m going to ask better questions to take that in a different way Unless I really prepared it Yeah, yeah. I have really thought through. Yeah, and I think that there’s a higher level of expectation as well from a buyer or prospect in today’s day and age, we have access to so much information, right? I mean, you don’t want to get a sales call and say, hey, you know, so where are you from? I mean, if you don’t have the wherewithal value to do your due diligence and learn a little bit about the company or the decision maker or the people that you’re speaking with before you get on a call, it just looks like you’re unprepared and it leaves a very bad taste in their mouth And I think, from my perspective also, one thing that I see, you talk a little bit about head trash, but sometimes a sales problem that I see that starts before the sales call is salespeople will create their own objections before they even get on the call Yes.
Okay. Saying they might have some of these preconceived notions about what the customer is expecting or what they want, and, you know, they create their actions. Oh, this lead is trash. Oh, there’s no opportunity here. You know, before even having that exploratory or consultative call with them, you know, yeah, at face value, something might look like a terrible opportunity, but I’ve also gotten on calls with people that maybe we’re a small organization or they didn’t have you know, a very large opportunity, but they maybe made an introduction to somebody else that did, or at a later point in time, because I started on the right foot with them when they grew their business at a later point in time, we had an opportunity to acquire a large piece of business from them, because that relationship was established.
But assuming that you know everything about what they want ahead of time without doing that consultative sales process and creating your own objections is a very dangerous place to be in sales. You know, I always want to think about Absolutely.
Yeah Great Yeah. As an opportunity, like, when you were saying, hey, we already do direct mail, I’m like, awesome, because I sell direct. So there’s an opportunity here. I may be able to sell you mail. That’s great. Not, oh, you know, they’re already using mail. I’m like, well, that’s music to my ears. You utilize Yes. what I sell.
That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. I could not agree more.
So in your experience, what do you think top performers are doing before the prospect even gets on a call? Like, is there anything, you know, actually, you know, you’re the expert. What is it top 1% Sales, Producer that’s pretty impressive For Sandler, yeah, and we are a global company with over 250 offices worldwide.
Yeah.
Thank you. It’s pretty impressive. So let me reframe my reframe my question Okay. And maybe you won’t be willing to share your secret sauce, but is there anything that you do personally or religiously before a sales call that you think that most salespeople skip?
Yes, yes. Now, some of the things that I do, I no longer have to work as hard at them because I practice them for so long, right? But pre-call planning as a bucket, there are elements of it that Are still non-negotiables for me. One of them, I love AI. It will tell me it knows what I sell, right? And so I can, I’ve got my AI trained up to say, help me prepare for a sales call with, and I’ll tell them who the company is And I’m gonna understand, you know, who are their competitors, what are the like, you know, tell me a little bit about their sales team, how many salespeople do they likely have, what’s their revenue? What are, you know, is this a demand fulfillment or a demand creation kind of a sale? And so it’s going to give me a lot of information about What they’re likely dealing with that I always have to trust but verify. It’ll give me some good ideas of directions that I might want to go on that discovery, but it could be wrong, right? So, I will absolutely always do that. Other things is, I always Again, this part I don’t have to work on as hard anymore, but for a very long time it was practice. I mean, for years it was practice is I would write out my discovery questions. So, for example, that getting really intensely curious Some people are wired that way. I tend to want to jump in with my own idea. Like they say, hey, can you do this? I’m like, yes, I’m so excited. Let me tell, like, I, that’s just how I’m wired. And so I used to write across the top of my pre-call plan Handwritten in all capital letters, tell me more about that, because if I could just say, tell me more about that to something that they said that indicates there might be a deeper story there, I knew that I would overall do a much Better job so it’s not just planning around what do we know about this prospect, which of course I think everybody knows they should do, even if they’re not doing it consistently. It’s also planning how I’m going to run the call. So, if today goes well, what are the various outcomes of what next steps might come out of this?
Where do I already know they might have problems that I could test How… how can I make sure that I stay curious and don’t make assumptions? And for me, that was writing, tell me more about that on my pre-call plan until I finally would do it religiously, right? Yeah So preparedness, very important.
Yeah putting your games like there, you know, what are what are your options, your strategy, the methodology you’re going to utilize, really preparing yourself, because that’s also going to give you a lot more confidence when you engage the client.
Oh, yeah. For the customer, because you know you’re in that right headspace. You’re like, I’m ready, I’m prepared for this call.
Right. And if you think about what salespeople really get paid for, we get paid for two things. Conversations in front of customers and conversations in front of prospects.
conversations with customers and conversations with prospects. That is our game time. So, there’s a lot of analogies between athletes and salespeople. Even the very best athletes have to still have to practice their free throws, right? They still have to show up and work with their coach, and get better and better and better at their craft. And Even though I have maybe done this before, that doesn’t mean that I don’t need to sit down and prepare and prepare and prepare because this is my game time. This is literally what I get paid to do is to perform during these calls.
Sure. So I like how you really set the table earlier about the consultative sales process and ensuring that we’re asking all the right questions, pulling these problems out of which we can then present solutions. We’re providing a higher value added services diverting their attention away from cost and price and really getting them to engage in our organization. But, you know Because I know you’re speaking to the fact of, hey, if you’re doing all of these things, then you’re most likely not going to find yourself in a scenario where someone’s not responding to you or they’re not getting back to you.
What about when you do everything right to a T, right? You’ve had the consultative sales process, you prepared for the call, you isolated the problem, you agitated it, you presented it, you provided the solution. They love the product Yes. They agree they have the problem. They tell you the solution makes sense. They even tell you that the price is reasonable, and then they still don’t move forward. It’s happened to the best of us. Right. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. What’s missing? Sitting there scratching your head going, what is going on here? So, at this point, you know, what question would you ask to expose what’s really holding them back?
Yeah, yeah, okay. So There are about 7 reasons why sales don’t close. There are seven. That’s gonna be 90 9% of the time, when sales don’t close, it’s because of one of these 7 reasons. And all of them have to do with either the pain is not there, meaning we’re just not sure we need it The pricing makes sense. The investment makes sense. The ROI is likely there. But at the end of the day Maybe we’re okay where we are. Like, I don’t know that we need that extra firepower, right?
Pain is is one bucket, so we’re just not sure we need it, is one of those reasons Another bucket is around investment. They’re either not… Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah. So let’s say they haven’t experienced enough pain. Well, as a salesperson, I want them to push past that, you know, regardless if you have enough pain or not, you know, how do I convince you to buy for me Yeah, so I think there’s a distinction here, right? If I genuinely believe that What we are selling is in their best interest. And I genuinely have their best interests at heart, and I’m not trying to make a sale just because I want to meet my numbers. And that is an important distinction, right? Assuming that that is the case Then, I’ve got to recognize that there must be If there’s not current pain Yep or a recent history of pain that we can work with. The only other route that I can go is future pain. And it has to be a matter of when, not if, because if my doctor says to me, Emily, if you don’t clean up your lifestyle and stop sitting on your butt all day and eating fast food all day long. You are maybe going to die 5 years younger than you should. Like, I may or may not do something about that, but if my doctor says, Emily, if you don’t clean up your lifestyle, you are going to have a heart attack in the next 12 months. I’m like, oh.
Right. That’s way more compelling, right? So really, in those cases, if the piece that’s missing is They’re not fully bought into whether or not the pain is there.
The only other route that I can really go is, is there an argument for why Although it’s not now, if you don’t act now, it’s a matter of when, not if this happens, and it could be your competitors are likely to launch then before you do We have every reason to believe that they will. It could be that you can’t be left behind. I mean.
Yeah Yes. There are a lot of reasons, but I can share the most effective way to create that or kind of test for that future pain is through sharing third party stories. So let me share with you somebody that, and I hope this wouldn’t happen to you, of course, but we have had people who we had this exact conversation. They said we’re not quite ready, you know, we realize what it could do for us. I just don’t know if we need that extra you know, influx at this moment in time, I can’t tell you how often they come back to us and say, I wish we had done it sooner, because X, Y, and Z happened, because we waited, and there’s a lag between when they hit the market and people actually take action, we are… we were doing great. We were swimming in But we missed a window to fill our future pipeline Right.
Love it. It’s good Yeah.
Let me see if there’s any questions. No questions in the chat. Anybody on the webinar today have any questions before I proceed with my line of questioning? We got a few minutes left.
She’s all yours.
They did There’s one, are you sending the recording? We are sending the recording. We will be sending the slides and the recording. Okay, that’s good stuff. So You know, I hear constantly that salespeople need to listen, right? We know that.
You got 2 years, one mouth. You should be listening more building trust, understanding the buyer. But sometimes the prospect is actually wrong, you know, or the solution they’re asking for isn’t what they need. You know, when should a great salesperson challenge the prospect rather than agreeing, and How do you think that they should approach that in a professional manner?
Oh, we do Okay, really good question. And I just, I realize now we have two questions in the Q&A that we neither of us noticed. I know. So There are, if we need to challenge somebody about the way that they’re thinking about it Here’s the rule You can say just about anything you want to say to somebody without being rude or too aggressive As long as you say it in third party and let them off the hook. Okay? So here’s what it might sound like.
I was actually just teaching this to my sister-in-law, who’s a professional dog trainer, and she’s trying to challenge dog owners who are really scared of putting a muzzle on their dog.
Right? She’s like, help me figure out how to overcome this objection, right? I’m like, the formula is the same for all these situations. Let them off the hook, and then use third party. Hey, this might not be the case for you, but a lot of dog owners tell us that they’re scared of a muzzle because… and then we’re going to go ahead and call out Like acknowledge their fear, acknowledge whatever it is that you kind of give give some Empathy to whatever it is, is that kind of their misunderstanding that you want to challenge, right? And you’re going to let them off by the hook by saying this might not be the case for you, but a lot of people have shared this with us. And maybe you’re feeling this way.
Then you’re going to say what other people, other people who found the same, who felt the same way After they decided to give it a try anyway, here’s what they have, how they evaluated it. They gave it a try, and here’s the outcomes that they had, right? So, if I come in and say, let me tell you how to think about this, you’re thinking about this all wrong.
they’re thinking, yeah, who are… but you’re the salesperson, you obviously have an agenda, I don’t know if I believe that. But when you repackage it into, this might not be the case for you, I’ve worked with a lot of people who felt the same way, and here’s what they found. Other people You can very comfortably challenge really anything that you want to challenge without kind of putting them on a spot in a way that makes people feel uncomfortable.
Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I apologize. There were some questions in the Q&A that I didn’t see. So an anonymous attendee is asking, what do you do when you do all of your homework before the cold call? They’re already mailing cards, and you know what they’re paying, and the quantity frequency. So you call, and they don’t even listen, and they say, we’re all set, and they hang up on you.
I think this is more of a cold calling situation, right? You know.
It is.
Yeah, go ahead, Emily. Okay, I’m going to I’m really good with hard truths. All right, so just I’m just buckle up.
It probably has to do with Your technique on that outbound call.
Sure. Which is not easy. You don’t know how to do it in a better way until you know, right? But what most people do when that happens is is they see that they’re mailing something, and so we give them a call. I mean, I did this, I sold advertising and then later managed a team that sold advertising, and he would see people advertising, and we’d call and be like, hey, you’re buying ads over here, can we… can we talk about buying ads over here, right? That was the conversation that me and our reps did all the time But when we come at them in that way, their walls are up. And so a lot of what we teach has to do with how can we be aware of those walls and kind of dismantle them and keep them low.
Right? So the technique on that call is going to, again, let them off the hook. Hey, I saw that you’re doing mailings I got one at my house, appreciate it, right? I’m certainly not going to make any assumptions about that, about, you know how it’s performing for you or anything like that.
Really I wanted to talk to you about the ROI on that, because that’s what we do, and certainly if you aren’t having any issues with ROI, We probably don’t need to talk. But if that is something that you want to discuss further, should we talk at a time when you’re actually expecting me? And so that’s one example. But in that example, what I’m doing is I’m always hitting that little pressure release valve of, I’m not going to make any assumptions About Your campaign, maybe it’s performing for you beautifully.
Sure. If it’s not, that’s kind of our specialty, right? Should we have a high-level discussion and then figure out if we even want to talk from there? So rather than, hey, I see you’re printing stuff, can we print it for you instead? Which is how I’m guessing a lot of these calls go Yeah. The technique is what’s different. Yeah.
Yes Yeah, is there anything that you know you would like done differently? Are you looking for more value? Are you getting a good response? Questions, things like that. Exactly.
Yeah. Yep We’ve got several people asking about the reason sales don’t close. Okay, let me just list those out really quickly. Yes.
Yes. Yes, they wanted… they wanted 7 reasons a sale doesn’t because you started with them, I interrupted.
I started I just dangled that little carrot and then moved on. Okay, so what’s helpful about this is if I know what those reasons are, then as I’m working through a deal, I can check myself and say, is that likely to happen here? Is that likely to happen here? And I can kind Take them one at a time and figure out how real do I think this deal is. Do I need to do more qualifying?
We’re just not sure we need it. That one’s related to lack of buy-in that there’s real pain here, right? We’re going to do it, but it’s the timeframe is down down the road. So we’re… we love this, love it, love it, love it. We’re gonna do it next quarter, next year, next half, whatever it is The issue is that even if they believe with their entire being that that is the truth when they tell you that, there are a lot of things that can change between now and then that make that deal fall apart, that are completely out of anybody’s control So that’s something where we’ve got to push back and say, okay, totally understand. Right. Does it make sense to print it now and mail it later? Does it make sense to and then sort of try to dig into the why behind that? When is there any kind of opportunity for urgency, etc.
The moment has passed, meaning there was pain and it was acute.
But over time, our priorities have shifted. And that also goes back to pain. It’s this was important to us when we first talked to you. It’s lost importance as other things have risen in priority. So from a pain discovery question as well, we also want to really understand where does this even rank? You m ight have loads of pain But if you have three issues over here that are even bigger problems, I’ve got to be realistic about where does this fall in line, right? We like someone else better We were outsold, essentially. For some reason or another, they felt like the competition had a better solution. We don’t have the budget, which is fine if I know that early on. I don’t want to find that out at the end, right? I want to have a higher level conversation about that earlier on.
I like it, but someone else doesn’t. So we’ve talked about that one a little bit as an objection of I really wanted to move forward with you, but, you know, our owner has a relationship with this vendor, and so we’re just gonna have to do that, whatever it is. Or in the final piece is something just doesn’t fit. Like, there’s something about your solution that doesn’t feel like it’s an exact match to our problem. So maybe I’m trying to sell them ROI and they’re not entirely bought in that that matters to them in this moment in time, right? So I’m not fully aligned with them about what they care about and they’re not bought in on that. So there’s something about our solution and what they wanted. It’s not the best match Those are the seven things Awesome. Thank you. Well, almost out of time here. I mean, obviously you’ve generated a significant amount of interest. So after this webinar, we’re definitely going to send out the deck and the recording Awesome. And Emily’s contact information, so that if you have additional questions or are interested in her services, that you guys can connect on a more personal level. So we definitely appreciate everybody joining us today. There’s a lot of ways that you can spend your time. We appreciate you spending with us. Emily. Thank you again. It was fantastic You’re welcome. Great to have you on. Thank you very much, ladies. It was great. There are three questions we didn’t get to, unfortunately, but We’ll share them with Morgan and Emily, and maybe they can get back to you guys Absolutely. Yeah, we’ll figure it out. Yeah Alright, fabulous. Thank you so much, everybody. Bye-bye
